Mette and Channie had arranged a trip to Finland to train with Janita and Jaakko and I was fortunate enough to join them 🙂 We drove through Sweden – a 6-7 hours drive – and took the ferry from Stockholm to Turku – and from Turku it was about a ½ hours drive to the destination. The accommodation and surroundings were very fine – great places to walk the dogs.

I had decided to run with both Sookie and Vini. Vini is still pretty new and doesn’t know a lot of the advanced handling yet but thought we could learn how Janita & Jaakko starts up a young dog.

The training was so great – I really learned a lot!! If I am to describe myself before the seminar then I was a non-trusting-obstacle-focused-handler – this is now changed 🙂 I found out that both Vini and Sookie are “trustworthy” and as they are obstacle focused I can focus on the handling instead 😀

We had some great laughs – I am not familiar with the terminology and don’t know what the different handling styles are called. So at a point Jaakko told me to do a spin – which I thought was running around in a circle (to call Sookie away from the tunnel) but that wasn’t what he meant and when I realised that it was just so hilarious 🙂 Another time I was constantly looking for a jump and when Janita asked why I answered that I needed to orientate – her comment was: well, I haven’t moved the jump since last time you looked 😀

As said, I learned so much and there is so much to remember! Not sure when I manage to get rid of all the old habits but hopefully soon as I really can see and feel the difference when trusting the dogs and not being focused on the obstacles.

Here’s a short video from our training:

It started snowing Thursday and when walking the dogs Friday morning they got so excited about the snow and started playing – I was watching them for a while before I filmed them:

It kept snowing Friday and I was happy that there was only ½ an hour’s drive to the ferry:

Driving in Finland

A big thank you to Channie, Mette, Janita & Jaakko for the time I had in Finland 🙂